


When You Call Me That

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [97]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky in Wakanda, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Mutual Pining, Skype
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 18:39:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15492189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: “I don’t really know how this works,” Steve says, “the science behind it or anything, so I’m afraid I’ll click the wrong button or hover over the wrong whoozit and you’ll just disappear.”





	When You Call Me That

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Long distance relationship. Prompt from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).

“I don’t really know how this works,” Steve says, “the science behind it or anything, so I’m afraid I’ll click the wrong button or hover over the wrong whoozit and you’ll just disappear.”

Bucky smiles--god, does he--and shows Steve his palms. “Ok, let’s make a rule then. Hands off the keys while we’re talking, all right?”

Steve’s own face goes dopey. He knows that it does. Doesn’t need to check the little box of him on the bottom of the screen to be sure. “All right.”

There’s a little silence then, a stretch of space and quiet over thousands of miles, too many years. Steve is staring and so is Bucky so it’s ok, Steve figures; they’re both eager to look.

The sun’s setting in Wakanda, the sky beyond Bucky ablaze in purples and gold. He’s sitting outside, sprawled in the grass, and the mic picks up the sway of it, the hum the grass makes as the wind stretches its fingers through it, through Bucky’s hair, too.

“You let it grow out,” Steve says. “Your hair, I mean. Looks good.”

Bucky laughs. “There’s a lot of it, yeah. Some days, I think about shaving it. Hacking it all off. You know, when I’ve been out here all day with the little brats and it gets really hot. I’ve come close more than once.”

“What brats?”

“Oh!” Bucky says. “That’s right, you don’t--hang on. Let me grab one. Easier to show than to tell.”

He’s on his feet and out of the frame before Steve can say a damn thing and when he reappears a minute later, he’s got a small, bleating bundle in his arms.

“I call them brats,” he says, settling back in the grass, “but the proper name is kids, I guess. Same difference.” He hoists the goat up, butts its head with his cheek. “And sometimes you guys can be real jerks, can’t you?”

The kid honks again and stops squirming quite so hard. Butts Bucky back.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” Steve says, grinning like a loon, “when did you go Old MacDonald?”

“Hey, it was time for me to learn a new skill. And Shuri assures me that even in the States, goats are ‘lit.’ Whatever the hell that means.” He gives the kid one more squeeze and sets it down. “She was telling me something about urban farming that just confused the shit out of me. But what doesn’t these days? Besides you.”

“I don’t confuse you? Oh hell, stop the presses. That’s new.”

Bucky’s smile goes lopsided. “Aw, you never confused me. Confounded me, yeah. Pissed me off? For sure. But I’ve always had your number, Steve. Don’t you forget it.”

Steve has to hold on to the table, its scarred wood rough on his hands. He has to hold on to it, he has to, because what he wants to touch is Bucky and god, has he ever wanted to so damn much? He has to look away, has to take his eyes away from Bucky and hang them on the battered wall of the safehouse they’re hiding in, some old spiderhole of Nat’s outside of Cordoba. It’s the first time he’d felt secure enough to fire up Shuri’s gift, a tablet thing with foldout keys, and to reach out to Bucky and now, he almost wishes he hadn’t.

“Steve? Hey, Rogers. Where’d you go?”

“Still here.”

“Are you? You don’t look it.”

“Buck--”

A rush of breath, a bloom of light in Bucky’s face that Steve never thought he’d ever see again. “God, I love it when you call me that.”

Steve's heart stutters, threatens to stop. He’s awake on the other side of the world, is Buck; he’d not dead anymore, not frozen or brainwashed homicidal. He’s right there, he’s _there_ , beautiful and alive and why Steve thought he could do this, have a casual conversation thanks to some technological hoodoo and not feel like he was stabbing himself in the heart, he has no fucking clue.

“This is really hard for you, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, scrubbing a hand over his face. “It is."

The sound of the wind, the slip of the sun below Bucky’s shoulder. “You could come here, if you want," Bucky says. "Might be easier to talk in person.”

The words slip out before he can stop them. “If I were there, I doubt we’d be talking.”

Bucky’s voice comes through soft and hot and Steve can see in Bucky’s face everything that he’s yearning for, that he’s waited so long and so patiently to have again. “ _Stevie_.”

“I can’t do this yet,” Steve says. His body feels like a live wire, full of raw spark, his voice like sandpaper. “I thought I could, but I can’t. I’m not--”

Buck tips his face towards the camera, so close that Steve can see the flecks of green in his eyes. “It’s ok, you know. We don’t have to talk.”


End file.
